That’s Ireland

If last Friday’s opinion polls are true, the Irish electorate may be finally realising that Fianna Fail have spent years in power laughing at us every day, serving up wave after wave of scandals, any one of which could bring down a Government in a functioning democracy, but knowing that we have become so desensitised by the sheer volume that we accept them as normal.

And so far they have gotten away with at least fifty ways to laugh at voters, including taking the highest-paid political salaries in the democratic world, Bertie Ahern’s incredible fairy-tales about getting dig-out loans from plasterers, giving £30,000 to someone he can’t remember and getting briefcases of cash from future landlords who were at dinners but didn’t eat the dinners, Frank Dunlop’s stash of bribes for buying councillors, Liam ‘Mr Big’ Lawlor being jailed three times after chairing the Dail Ethics Committee, Michael Collins being found guilty of tax evasion, Michael ‘Stroke’ Fahey being jailed for fraud while chairing a Prison Visiting Committee, Ivor Callely having his house painted for free and John Ellis owing money to farmers yet both being made Senators after the electorate voted them out of the Dail, €52 million so far spent on unused electronic voting machines, using taxpayers money to make secret deals with scandal-hit independent TDs, creating new Junior Ministers with salaries of €150,000 a year, appointing people to State boards because they are your friends, Willie O’Dea posing with guns pointed at cameras, Jim McDaid drunk driving on the wrong side of a busy dual carriageway, GV Wright drunk driving and knocking over a nurse, Conor Lenihan referring to Turkish workers as kababs, Ray Burke accepting corrupt payments from property developers and radio station owners and being jailed for breaking a tax law he had helped to pass, Beverly Flynn helping people to evade tax and suing RTE for telling people about it, PJ Mara failing to co-operate with a Tribunal, Ned O’Keefe voting on issues his family had business interests in, Joe Jacob giving comical interviews on radio that resulted in useless iodine tablets being sent to every house in the country, Charlie McCreevy nominating a disgraced ex-judge to a £147,000 job as Vice President of the European Investment Bank, Denis Foley ‘hoping against hope’ that his £100,000 was not in an illegal offshore account, Padraig Flynn complaining about the difficulties of maintaining three houses in 1999 on ‘just £100,000 a year’, and a Tribunal finding that Charles Haughey took €45 million in today’s money and granted favours in return.

All of the above have happened since Bertie Ahern became leader of Fianna Fail in 1994. There is a full list below of the most obvious fifty recent Fianna Fail scandals, and I’m sure I have left out a lot more. So, while the opinion polls show that more people are waking up to this, please help to spread the word.

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And here is the full list of fifty ways to laugh at voters. (more…)

A lot of Irish placenames are Anglicised versions of Gaelic names. Do you know what placenames came from the Gaelic words for:

• Town of Excrement, County Wexford
• Town of the Dungstand, County Down
• Hillside of the Breast, County Fermanagh
• The Buttock, Counties Donegal, Galway and Mayo
• The Fat Buttock, County Kerry
• Backside to the Wind, Counties Armagh and Mayo
• Buttock Island, County Kerry
• The Two Breasts, County Kerry
• Bottom, County Monaghan
• Black Bottom, County Donegal

Placenames like breast and buttock typically refer to the shape of hills. Answers just a click away: >>> (more…)

I was at the Mahon Tribunal yesterday, listening to the latest fantastic twists in the fable of Bertie Ahern and the Magic Briefcase, and I have designed these two posters making public appeals that could solve all of the mysteries.

And here is the second poster, which deals with Ahern’s latest story - that he believes that he gave somebody £30,000 to buy sterling with, but he can’t remember who he gave it to. >>> (more…)

Some time after my first series of letters to Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary about saving money by running airplanes with no seats, I noticed that he had made reference to the topic in two media interviews. I immediately assumed that he was preparing the ground for a joint venture with me manufacturing seatless airplanes, so I wrote him this letter: >>> (more…)

The Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, had a bit of swipe at some of his rival superstitions yesterday. He slammed horoscopes, astrology, palm-reading, clairvoyance and mediums, pointing out that:

One of the most subtle but disturbing signs of this underlying fear in Irish life is the increasing reliance of people on practices which claim to ‘unveil’ the future… Those who put their trust in them or take them seriously are colluding with an illusion, promoting a fiction.

He’s correct, of course. But he would be just as correct if he had said the exact same thing about Christianity. It too appeals to underlying fears, it too claims to ‘unveil’ the future, and those who take it seriously are also promoting a fiction.

However, he is wrong when he describes horoscopes, etc, as ‘the new Irish superstition’. And here is why. >>> (more…)

Here’s a prank letter that I sent to Cunard Cruise Line a while ago. It is a query from an Irish lottery winner with a peculiar requirement for a cruise. >>> (more…)

I’ve just been to see the latest Harry Potter movie, and I spent most of the film trying to think who Kreacher reminded me of.

Then it dawned on me! Have a guess before you look… >>> (more…)

Update: This advert for Plavsa has now been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland. For more details please click here or else read comment number 120 at the end of this post.

According to a full page ad in this Sunday’s Irish Mail magazine, a ‘Dr. Slausberg from the University of Gotenberg (Sweden)’ has discovered ‘Plavsa, the slimming capsule that soaks up fat’. I have asked the Advertising Authority of Ireland to investigate the claims made for this and related products.

According to the hard-to-find Dr. Slausberg, Plavsa occurs naturally in fish, ‘which is why you never see a fat sea animal.’ I assume the good doctor has never seen a whale. Or a walrus. Or a seal. The ad also says that Plavsa ‘stimulates your digestive system by rapidly eliminating the binded fat molecules’, which sounds to me like a fancy way of saying that it makes you shit a lot more quickly than normal. So, more like a laxative than a slimming pill, perhaps?

The ad then points us to a website, health2udirect.com, where the claims get even fishier. >>> (more…)

This is my video tribute to John O’Donoghue’s entertaining temper tantrum on his first day as chairman of the new Dáil, and in its first week it was YouTube’s 15th most viewed video in Ireland. It’s going to be a fun five years!

I spent Friday at Tolka Park watching the good, the bad and the ugly of League of Ireland football. First, here’s the good: Bohemians fans bringing colour and atmosphere to the event. Opponents Shamrock Rovers are in a legal challenge with GAA club Thomas Davis over a new ground in Tallaght, so the Bohs fans had a giant crowd-cover flag emblazoned with a statue of Thomas Davis.

The video is from BohsTV. Now let’s look at the bad and the ugly. >>> (more…)

Here are the real names of ten Irish people who each became better known under a different name. What did they change their names to?

• Rosemary Brown
• Colm Caffrey
• Glen Coroner
• David Evans
• Paul Hewson
• Declan McManus
• Eithne Ní Bhraonáin
• Gerry Reynolds
• Sean Sherrard
• Graham Walker

Answers just a click away. >>> (more…)

Either Trevor Sargent is an ethical simpleton, or else he believes that the rest of us are. Trevor is now ‘absolutely happy’ with Bertie Ahern’s word on his personal finances. Why? Because the Greens were given two cabinet seats. That follows his Alice in Wonderland resignation speech after ‘proudly’ breaking his word to the electorate. Let’s look at exactly what has happened. >>> (more…)

How many Irish references can you remember from episodes of the Simpsons? Here are five to start you off. >>> (more…)

At least seven (and maybe nine) local areas in Ireland now have a majority of non-Irish nationals. Five are in Dublin, two in Limerick, one in Waterford and one in Cork. Here are the ten most multi-cultural Irish areas: >>> (more…)

So the Green Party have finally landed on Planet Bertie. Now I like John Gormley, and I know he is one of the good guys, but this short video shows him explaining why the Green Party really did it.

The unstoppable second wave of Irish pirate radio began in 1980, the year that Radio Caroline literally sank off the coast of Southend. Two former Caroline DJs had become aware of Ireland’s airwave anarchy. Undeterred by the prospect of a £50 fine, or even repeated £50 fines, these two ambitious gate-crashers were about to reshape the future of Irish radio. >>> (more…)

‘Doctor Don’ Moore was the man who popularised pirate radio in Ireland, before moving on to a more legitimate career as a traveling faith healer (seriously). His rise began in the mid 1970s when RTE was a musical mess, having snubbed pop music, rock and roll, glam rock, prog rock and disco. >>> (more…)

When the GAA was founded in 1884, they used rectangular soccer-style goals. Whichever team scored the most goals won, and there were no points. It took a quarter of a century for the current scoring system to evolve. >>> (more…)

Six Irish County names are also allowable Scrabble words. Three are easy to guess, the other three harder. Answer just a click away. >>> (more…)

If you’re looking for a woman in Ireland, you should start in the No 3 Electoral Area of Galway City, where one woman in every seven is likely to be unattached, then move on to Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. That’s based on the latest census figures. Here are the ten best places. >>> (more…)